Thursday, July 29, 2010

Postscript to that last post: I'm interested in the ways that we do and don't pay attention to one another.
I've been thinking quite a bit about Geof Huth's 365 Ltrs project. It is, to my mind, an unusually audacious and raggedly beautiful undertaking. The premise is simple: to write a letter in the form of a poem, every day for a year, each poem being addressed to a diffferent individual. The poems are so far primarily addressed to poets, family, artists, colleagues and friends.

What's emerging is a layered monologue which I find incredibly moving. It's instance after instance of address, but it is also a kind of ongoing diary, an extraordinary record of one man's will to create. It is not a small undertaking. These are daily poems which wax on. If he continues at his present pace he will have a manuscript of over one thousand pages when all is said and done. This is good stuff worth paying attention to.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

So maybe I'm inching back into blogging a little. It's really hot and humid here. I'm tapping these keys clad only in silk boxers and the sheen of man dew. (NB: this is a thought experiment aimed at launching waves of my pheromones onto the internet. Be warned.)

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Ever feel like a Frankenpoet, lurching from laboratory to graveyard, over and over again? Ever get tired of being chased by all those torch carrying villagers?

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Deleuze wrote that "Paradox is the pathos or the passion of philosophy." I think that that's equally true of poetry & therein lies an aspect of my fascination with the ways in which philosophy and poetry follow parallel paths.

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I'm making myself a little crazy writing this poem talk thing for the Avant Writing Symposium at Ohio State next month. I'm making an effort to leave things in which I would normally leave out.

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I celebrated a birthday (number 57) a few days ago. One of my gifts was an Ipod Shuffle (we're routinely late adaptors of technology). Mischa, who was visiting at the time, programmed a favorite CD of mine into the thing. Days later I'm grooving with it and Barb comes up to me and says something. I say "Just a sec, I can't hear you" and take off my glasses instead of the ear buds.

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All confusions are essential, no?

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I'm contemplating a few upcoming publications of my work, after a bit of a dry spell: 2 chapbooks via Geof Huth, and EXPOSURES via Leafe Press. 3 texts which couldn't be more different. All of which are important to me in unique ways.

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Difference. What does that mean for/to you? It's a question that's fundamental to the history of Western thought. It's an Ancient question which doesn't get old.

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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Books are, for me, a form of currency. They flow in and out of our household all the time. (They overflow our household,too, encroaching on all areas.) I buy, sell, trade, give away books with regularity. It is an aspect of how I breathe and think, how I choose to participate in the world.

One of my most treasured and well-thumbed volumes is a hardback first edition of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus. I'm grateful to Charles Bernstein, back in the proverbial day, for first alerting me to the book.

I'm blogging this now on the occasion of Francois Dosse's Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari: Intersecting Lives having arrived in the mail today. This is my kind of book. Intellectual history can be a beautiful thing. And this is a particularly fascinating story--how these two very different individuals came to work together to create some of the most influential philosophical works of the last 50 years. Check this book out. The story of two great individuals and an even greater collaboration.

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Yesterday was my 57th birthday. And it was a pretty fine day, too.

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Writing is a struggle lately, but sometimes I succeed in sneaking an intelligent sentence through the mess which I have become.

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Sometime in late 2010 or early 2011 it is rumoured that Leafe Press will publish my EXPOSURES. Stay tuned.

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Sunday, July 18, 2010

I grew up with artificial flavors,
seizures, hyperactivity, sugar, depression,
medication and a sense of humor.

I grew up horny and anxious.

I grew up playing air guitar.

I grew up wanting to be intervened in,
wishing I could be usefully colonized.

I grew up waiting.

I grew up changing channels.

I grew up uncertain and confused.

I grew up dreaming I could fly.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Do you ever seriously wonder about your own reality/irreality? Are we all becoming Avatars?
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I'm wondering if I approached Comedy Central about an hour-long program devoted to my career plans how they'd respond.
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It looks as if I have a publisher for EXPOSURES.
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